Enough With the Profiling Already!

When it comes to national security and profiling, it seems the government just doesn’t get it. Time and time again, efforts to identify suspicious individuals based on race, religion, ethnicity, etc. are shown to be not only inefficient, but also ineffective when it comes to protecting our nation against security threats. Now these controversial programs are being ruled as unconstitutional as well.

On Monday, the NYPD received a devastating blow to its “Stop and Frisk” policy when a federal judge ruled it violated the constitutional rights of minorities, particularly those of black and Hispanic men. In her decision, the judge stated that the practice, which involved stopping suspicious looking individuals and searching them on the streets, disregarded the 4th Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizures by the government as well as the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, as it disproportionately targeted minorities over whites.

Despite the fact that nearly 90 percent of such stops resulted in the suspect being released without the officers finding any basis for summons or arrest, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stood by the program and vowed to appeal the ruling. He stated that Stop and Frisk was responsible for “historic cuts in crime” and had saved numerous lives. Investigative reports, however, have failed to back his claim and are unclear on this connection, even going so far as to say the program causes diminishing effects over time. The policy’s serious breach of civil liberties, though, is crystal clear.

Stop and Frisk isn’t the only blemish of its type on Bloomberg’s record. He and the NYPD were sued last month by Muslim religious and community leaders, mosques, and charitable organizations which were monitored by undercover NYPD informants. The lawsuit requests the court to declare such behavior unconstitutional and to order the destruction of related records. A similar suit was filed last year in New Jersey and included among its plaintiffs a Muslim student from Rutgers University, one of the many campuses on the east coast that discovered that the activities and members of their Muslim Students Associations were being secretly monitored by the NYPD.

The federal government is not exactly in the clear when it comes to profiling, either. News of a Defense Department agency training program made headlines last week for its method of identifying insider threats. The training, in addition to mentioning expected potential indicators such as difficult life circumstances, criminal behavior, and an unusual interest in classified information, also includes more puzzling factors such as “unreported foreign contact and travel” and “divided loyalty or allegiance to the U.S.”

One character in the training, “Hema”, was listed as “High Threat” because she visited family in India twice a year, spoke about her unhappiness with U.S. foreign policy, and had her car repossessed.

Call me crazy, but since when did dissatisfaction with certain aspects of the government indicate one was disloyal to the U.S.? Many Americans oppose various government programs and policies, such as Obamacare, TSA regulations, immigration policy, and abortion, but that does not automatically equate them to a high threat. By issuing such a training, the federal government appears to be supporting homogeneous employees who agree with all government views and discouraging critical thinking or a diversity of ideas by dissenters that would only serve to make our system stronger.

Finally, in today’s global world, people are travelling constantly and may have friends or family outside our nation’s borders. Communicating or visiting them does not necessarily make them a source of concern. Thankfully, the training, which interestingly enough received only one complaint from its millions of federal employee participants, is being revised. The new version will be released in October, this time with more emphasis on behavior rather than personal characteristics or beliefs.

This is definitely a step in the right direction. While a person’s background should not be completely disregarded when it comes to determining security risks, it also shouldn’t be the most determining factor. Our tax dollars would be better spent following legitimate leads from a person’s actions rather than from how they dress, worship, or what ethnic or religious background they hail from. Security threats come in all shapes and sizes, and a “one size fit all” approach encouraged by profiling not only entails a violation of civil liberties, but it also simply isn’t nuanced enough to succeed in keeping us safe. And at the end of the day, isn’t that the ultimate goal?

10 Responses

To Scott, I will say only one thing – The WMD affair in Iraq. To this day as I have said before, no one has visited this subject from the time it was found to be a lie.
What the media, which usually covers up a lot of this has not pursued it like it pursues other topics dealing with the Islamists. The latter is covered in such detail, that an analyst after analyst will come and give thier two cents – btw most analysts are Jewish (for some reason they are the only ones who know everything, they are also ‘Pulitzer Prize’ calibre!!)
If you do not remember, during the Bush administration, he had his whole cabinet (Condolisa, Powell etc) lie to the US and the world that WMD was found in Iraq and to back sending the US military might to annihilate the country and its people – which was promptly done.
A beautiful vibrant country lay wasted, civil war which never existed before is the order of the day.
Casualties: Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Men, Women and Children, thousand of US men and women military personnel and the country of Iraq in ruins.
That was the start of what you see today, in basically every Muslim country, the WMD lie started it and still being used as the excuse to go in any country and risk our soldiers and destroy other countries and its people.
There are two sides to a coin, one has to dig to find the other side of the picture. Please do so.
Regards

I sympathize with your experiences. Though I don’t encounter the same suspicion from security officials, when I was younger I was shy, overweight and clumsy and had to deal with the attitude of “it’s not our fault we don’t trust you.”

I’d love to see the day that racial profiling is something that we don’t do anymore. I think the only thing that will make that happen is for the Muslim world to establish a no tolerance policy for the terrorists in their midst. For the Muslim community to speak up loudly against any of the members preaching violence or revenge against the US or Israel. Worldwide. And make everyone else believe it.

If Islam is truly a religion of peace…start proving it by ending all support for terrorism-especially that done in the name of Islam. And end the call for worldwide Jihad and the establishment of a worldwide caliphate. But that has not happened. And it won’t.

So help me please…if he overwhelming majority of terrorist murders in the world are carried out by Muslims, Arab or otherwise, how do those of us that value the lives of our families not see this as a population that needs extra scrutiny?

Perhaps we can cut Muslims with US citizenship a break, as we view civil rights for our citizens as a key value…but how can we not put extra scrutiny on everyone coming into the US from a Muslim country under heightened scrutiny for that reason alone?

You say that racial profiling is ineffective. Where’s your evidence? You can’t prove a negative. Personally I think the fact that law enforcement keeping a good eye on radical and potentially radical Muslims probably saves lives by making it harder for individuals interested in radicalizing to assemble and meet. It makes planning infiltration of the US borders more difficult. It makes it harder for Mosques and Islamic community organizations to be used as terrorist community centers. Not that that’s what they are there for, but they have been used for that purpose in the past around the world.

Personally I’d go even further, curtailing entry to citizens of Muslim countries not fully cooperating in the fight against terrorism except for short term business and family visits. I’d stop offering H1-B and student visas. That means Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen and a few others.

I feel bad, but this isn’t a case of some guy like Zimmerman hunting and murdering a black kid for not other reason but race. Even during the Black Panther days blacks never planned and carried out mass murders of innocent civilians. Muslims have and they do to this day. Tell me some other way that would be more effective in protecting our lives-a concern which unfortunately trumps hurt feelings- from mass murderers hiding in your midst.

Great comments and Wardah, let us face it profiling is not only happening here, it is happening in every country. But like someone remarked, here we can at least protest and the due process of law may take place.
In other countries (Muslim and non-Muslim alike)there is a great possibility that one would just disappear from the face of the earth, after he/she was secretly profiled.
US had been sheltered from all this for many years and the general public did not even know what it meant.
But a couple of developments have turned the simple world the older generation knew into the new face that we see today.
First was US involvement in affairs of most of the countries of the world, whether it is politically motivated or economic reasons or religious?? who knows – but that upsets people of all ethnicities.
The second item impacting is the internet and how quickly events happening in the world get dessiminated to everyone on earth. Depending of what the event is and which country and what religion, there is an immediate reaction.
Another aspect is the violence on TV and movies, it desensitizes the young mind.
Hence the US is catching up with the rest of the world in implementing profiling, we are fortunate that we can protest as I said earleir, but unfortuantely it is here and no one can do much about it, we just have to trust that it is in our best interest.
Regards

Just be glad you don’t live in a Muslim country. You can complain here but not in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the other Muslim controlled countries.
The U.S., and Houston, is full of Muslims that don’t want to live under Sharia law. They are citizens and not terrorists and should treated as such.
….
“Palestine is the cement that holds the Arab world together, or it is the explosive that blows it apart.”
Yasser Arafat

I am a white male person.
I go through the same TSA airport security as you do. There is good reason for that.
I answer the same questions as you do when I get my passport. There is good reason for that.
I don’t get profiled like you, as a Muslim, do. There is probably a good reason for that as well.

Unfortunately today all of us are loosing our privacy and in some way we are all being profiled. As far as people of the Islamic faith being more robustly profiled, well, unfortunately, you understand our recent history with the radical element of your faith and therefore will be under more scrutiny. Is it fair? Probably not, but I know you understand the “why”.